Getting the Pic
by mariteri
Summary: How Maggie and Walter got the picture from Cal Lightman. Connected to "Finding Bones". Rated T to keep my bases covered.


**Disclaimer-I do not own The Finder, Lie to Me or any of the characters therein. Nor, sadly, do I make any moneys from the posting of this fanfiction.**

**Hello! Here's the story that's connected to the fanfiction "Finding Bones". Enjoy!**

**Please read and review.**

**...**

**Getting the Pic**

Cal Lightman watched the woman in their observation room with all the intensity that he usually reserved for the truly dangerous. The woman was petite at five feet, five inches tall with the build of a being so delicate one would be afraid to touch her for breaking. This unto itself made the woman foreign to him. What got to him was that her eyes, her oh so pale grey eyes, had so far not left his face once.

"Can she see me?" Cal asked Gillian as he moved about.

She looked over to the controllers. Startled, she said, "She shouldn't be able to."

"Maybe something's on the fritz?" Torrez said, looking over to her boss. "Want me to check?"

"That wouldn't be a good idea," Cal whispered, as he began to move. "I'll do it." He rushed up the stairs and swept into the room.

He was still looking into her eyes, as he sat down across from her.

"Impressive entrance," she said dryly. "Getting ready for the stage?" Her voice was soft, melodic, with an edge of pure steel. "Can we get on with this? I do so want to do something other than pretend to be an exhibit in a freak show today."

"The F.B.I. wanted me to gage you," he told her. "I take it that you couldn't care less?"

Leaning back into her chair, she replied, "Gage me? Learn me? Make believe that there's another reason for who and what I am? I've heard this song before and I've danced this dance more times that I like, Dr. Lightman. You aren't the first conductor I've run across and you certainly won't be the last." She looked away straight to Gillian, making the other woman gasp in shock. She looked back to him. "And before you ask, yes, I may be a bit touched in the head, but it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be." The woman thought it over. "Okay, so it's as bad as you think, but I'd rather not get into it."

Cal leaned forward, studying her. "You don't like this room."

Her eyes flickered with ire and her lips flattened with annoyance proved to be her only answer to his statement.

"Okay, prove it to me." This had her looking at him hard. "Show me. If you're so bloody great at this psychic business, prove it."

Her lips twisted into a grin and soon she was laughing. "You don't mean that." She leaned her elbow on the table in front of her, pressing her chin into the palm of her hand. "No one who ever says those words really mean them."

"Psychics are fake. They don't exist."

"You do realize that what you said is the equivalent of telling a unicorn in person that they don't exist, don't you?" she asked in a nearly confidential manner. When all he did was stare at her, she added, "Or the Lock Ness monster. Take your pick."

"You have yet…"

She erupted out of her chair, knocking it back as she roared with a perfect Cockney accent, "You shut your mouth, boy-o, or I'll give you something to cry over!" She prowled around, as if looking for something in a room that didn't exist in this place. "Where's my whiskey?"

"Oh shit," Gillian whispered, horrified over the complete change in the woman. Her eyes snapped over to Cal, who had lost all the color in his face as he watched her.

But as quickly as this change came over her, she went through another. "I can't do this anymore, Cal!" Her stance changed and she was whipping around to face him. "I can't live with you the way you're being! You ask for everything and you aren't willing to give me…" She shook her head, sorrowful tears dripping down her face. "You can have Emily this week. I'll call you."

The woman went through another change, picking up the chair and setting it straight. Slipping into it, body positioning made her look as if she were draped over the chair and not just sitting in it.

"So tell me honestly, Dr. Lightman. Do you really think my husband was murdered?"

Leaping to his feet, Cal slammed his hands flat on the table. "Enough!"

That seemed to have her snap out of the persona she was adopting. Twisting around so that now she was sitting properly, she murmured, "How can a person sit like that? It's very uncomfortable." She blinked at him. "I take it I've managed to piss you off? That's not new for me either."

Cal sat down. He needed to ask how she knew. When and where this information was leaked out. Anger burned in his gut and had him glaring at her even as she became all the more relaxed.

Standing up, she said, "Well, this has been fun." And she left without a backwards glance.

Puzzled and more than a little curious, he followed her out. A tall man leapt to his feet. Muscular the man looked more of a soldier than civilian. When he spotted Cal, he slipped between him and the woman.

"The F.B.I. gave her the option of saying no," he told him. "And apparently she just did." He looked over to the pictures of faces. "Nice art." And rushed out the door after her.

Rocking back on his heels, he was deep in thought as Gillian joined him. "What the heck was that?" she asked.

"There was something more going on here," he whispered. "Did they arrive together or separately?"

"I don't know," she answered honestly. "By the time I came into the control room, she was already inside the box."

Cal went to his computer and went over the security footage, falling back in his chair when he saw that she wasn't greeted and walked straight over to the box alone. She had punched in the security code, and fuck if it weren't the new one they had changed it to that morning! She sat down and waited.

He went back to the footage of the lobby and fast forwarded through it until the man showed up. Cal watched as he made his way back over to his office, disappearing from this camera's view. He switched over to his office's camera and was shocked to see that once he had gotten into it that he was looking through his case studies. Quickly he went through them until he got to the one he wanted. Yanking it out, he looked through it until he found a picture. Pulling it out, he hid it away just under the belt of his pants and yank his t-shirt over it. He made quick work of cleaning up the office before leaving.

Watching the man on the screen returning to the lobby, Cal struggled to think what picture was stolen. The man had no more than sat down than the woman had left the interview cube. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. Turning the footage off, he went over to the files and went through them until he found the one he was looking for.

"Romani?" He flipped it open, going through it deftly.

"Cal, what's going on?" Gillian asked as he rushed over to the computer again.

"That man stole something," he told her. "A picture from my study of the Romani."

"The American Gypsies?" she asked him.

"Yes," he murmured, studying each photo he had logged there as a digital duplicate. "That's the one!" He enlarged it and was shocked. "Well, fuck me!"

"I just might later, but we have a deal, remember?" Gillian asked, her voice teasing him. But when he didn't smile as he usually would, she walked over and looked at the photo. "Isn't that…?"

"The woman that just left? Yes, and judging from the age at the time of the photo she must have been fourteen or just a little younger." He sighed at the sight of the girl she had once been, her eyes closed as she kissed the slumbering baby in her arms. "At the time I thought she was her sister or cousin. I found out later that this was her daughter and that she had just given her up to her older sister."

"My God! She was just a child herself!"

He nodded. "Yes. But the question remains, why steal this picture?"

They had made it just in the nick of time. Maggie rushed over, adding her picture to the collage. Pulling back she looked at them all again, smiling to herself. Walter joined her, looking at the pictures of Willa with himself and Leo among others of her family and friends.

"Happy, sunshine?" he asked, looking over to her.

"Happy," she sighed. "I may not have been blessed to be a real part her life, but I wanted at the very least to be acknowledged as a small part of it all." Looking over to him, she murmured, "Let's get out of here. Funerals are such a drag."

"Aren't they though," he muttered, wrapping his arm over her shoulders and they walked away.

The End.


End file.
